Threads of Awakening, Weekly Wake-Up 003
Do you make a big deal of things?
I know I do.
Much more often than I’d like to, I see my problems as real and important and urgent.
It can help to shift your attention off the foreground and onto the background in those moments. It can help to reflect on context.
How fleeting this moment is. How small a part of the ongoing magnificence our immediate challenge is.
A central aim of Buddhist practice is the reduction of self-concern. This does not mean that you should neglect your well-being or treat yourself with anything but the utmost kindness and respect. Quite the contrary! YOU are the only vehicle you’ve got for doing anything of benefit in this life. So be good to yourself!
But put your self-concern in context. See its disproportionate scale. Watch how it distorts your perspective. Challenge it to reveal itself for what it is.
Try this:
Practice moving in and out of whatever’s going on right now, in this moment. Remember, “the key principle of meditation is to return to what’s already there and rest.” Like those tiny creatures at war in the flea’s eyebrow, BE in YOUR war. Experience its sensations.
Then, for a few moments, expand the field of your awareness. Notice or imagine the ground you’re standing on, the expanse of “eyebrow” around you, your bodily sensations. Expand further and imagine the flea-face that eyebrow sits on — the sounds, smells, and visual stimuli of your environment.
Feel the contours of that context and notice how it moves and changes. Expand to the whole body that flea-face rests on — to your community, your country, or the planet — and imagine it interacting with countless others just like it… and countless others unlike it.
Then return to your challenge.
Does it feel different? All its sensations and motives are still there, but have you shifted in relation to them? What shifted?
Notice.
And then expand out again.
And return once more.
Rest.
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By the way, the picture and quote above make up this week’s Weekly Wake-up. Every week I send messages like this to my mailing list. If you’d like to receive them, just fill your name and email address in the form to the right.
